The emergence of journals of Brazil and scenarios for their future

Abstract

Quality journals in Brazil have achieved remarkable progress in recent years, with an increasing presence in international bibliographic indexes and on the Web. This is primarily due to Brazilian authors from different fields of knowledge, communicating the results of their research in English and/or Portuguese. At least 80% of their original and review articles that are internationally indexed have a Brazilian affiliation, representing approximately 30% of the total indexed scientific production from Brazil. However, this national centrality has a low impact when measured by the number of citations received in the indexes in comparison to that of journals from developed countries. Despite their performance being comparable to that of journals from emerging countries, and although open access publishing results in an extraordinary number of article downloads, most journals of Brazil face the challenge of becoming qualified to compete on a national and international level for better quality manuscripts, as well as of improving their performance in the international indexes. This sought-after qualification demands that these journals overcome the inherent limitations of institutional, management, and financing conditions in which they operate, while advancing professionalization, internationalization, and innovation in the editing, publishing, and dissemination processes, in order to be aligned with international state-of-the-art standards. This article presents an overview of the main bibliometric and editorial management characteristics of the 400 journals of Brazil indexed in Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), Scopus, and Web of Science (WoS). It also projects scenarios for changing the current framework by promoting journals considered as international benchmarks and the way journals are evaluated and funded.